Social media transactions include a user identifying a person or enterprise having a friend or connected status or the like (referred to herein as a “friend”), where the user registers this status on a server hosting the user's social media account via a network connection, and the server stores it for future reference. Social media accounts include accounts for services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Linkedln, etc.
Similarly, social media transactions include a user identifying persons, organizations, events, places, services, products or other things, business or nonprofit enterprises, etc., that the user likes, deems a favorite, etc., (all of which are referred to herein as “likes”). Likes may include identifying social media accounts persons, organizations, events, etc. generally, as well as particular posted content, including content posted online on both social media accounts and elsewhere. Again, the user communicates these likes via a network to a social media host, which stores them on the user's social media account.
Also, social media transactions include a user following particular online content as feeds. As the term is used herein, “following” includes adding to the user's social media message feeds from the accounts of other social media users, where “feeds” includes content such as posts from Facebook and tweets from Twitter. Following also includes subscribing, such as subscribing to blog posts of particular bloggers, where subscribing may also include more traditional subscribing, such as subscribing to entire online publications. As used herein, the term “feeds” includes these posts and publications. Once again, the user communicates to the social media server the identity of those feeds that the user wishes to follow, and the social media server stores those feed identities for future reference.
It should be appreciated from the above that “social media data,” as the term is used herein, includes identity of friends, likes and feeds.